Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Of horses and men.

On our trip to Johannesburg, we drove through some sleepy Free State towns. Invariably the town is gathered around a big old Dutch Reformed church, the name of the town is spelled out in white stones on some nearby koppie and without fail, our passing through
brought everything to a standstill.

In Fauresmith, the long legged man bought some ice for the cooler box, bashing the bags to break up the ice.
Within minutes we had a crowd of onlookers.

These towns seem forgotten by the outside world and poverty prevails. Small shops sell cell phones and airtime, but often there is no reception. There is litter - heaps of it, and many abandoned buildings.

Just outside of Philipolis,
we saw a herd of snow white springbok in a field.

Miles and miles of pale golden grass.

Anthills as far as the eye can see.

The anthills reminded me of something I read years ago in Deneys Reitz's book Commando. He was reading a book on an anthill when his horse's reins became entangled. He walked off to free the mare and moments later the anthill was blown apart,
leaving his book full of holes.

This journal is a first-hand account of a young man's experiences during the Boer War. (A teenager in fact - he joined the war at the tender age of seventeen) Far from the stuffy, fact-filled tomes that I've come across, it is written in a matter-of-fact yet poignant way.

"I chatted for a quiet hour with men who were mostlydead next morning."

During the course of guerilla warfare, he had countless narrow escapes and lost scores of close friends and beloved horses.

My knowledge of the boer War is scanty at best, but the
re-reading of this book has made me curious.

From Thomas Pakenham's The Boer War:

The war declared by the Boers on 11 October 1899 gave the British, in Kipling's famous phrase, 'no end of a lesson'. The British expected the war to be over by Christmas. It proved to be the longest (two and three quarter years), the costliest (over 200 million pounds), the bloodiest (at least 22 000 British, 25 000 Boer and 12 000 African lives) and the most humiliating war for Britain between 1815 and 1914.

New Year, Vanrhynsdorp, 2008, photograph by Christiaan Diedericks

I've always thought of the Free State as Boer War country - as this was the area they were fighting to keep. I little realised that the war stretched into the Western Cape - that towards the end, Vanrhynsdorp, on the edge of the Karoo, was the only town in Boer control and that they considered it their headquarters. Deneys Reitz followed General J.C.Smuts there and acted as scout and messenger, often riding his horse up and down the river.

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Then one evening there were no leftovers. I went to the grocery store. The sales clerk said artichokes are out of season. This is not San Diego. Still I dreamt of her, dipped in lemony butter, scraped carefully with teeth and sucked, the pale cream flesh, the tender flower, her skirt held like a cup, each sip bringing me closer to the moon, the vegetable pearl of her insides where the heart fans out fibrous hairs and waits a last mouthful of her green world.

Nin Andrews(1958-)

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Virginia Wolf

(1882-1941)

Never love anybody who treats you like you're ordinary.

Oscar Wilde

(1854-1900)

You could tend a garden at night, only at night, pouring dark water onto leaves, and into the earth, like pouring midnight onto midnight. You could hold your soil-stained hands up to the moon. The stars would gleam on the bottom of the shovel. It would smell the same as a daytime garden - it would smell green, violet, red, white. But come back, in daylight. Come back, to see the colours without closing your eyes.- Sean Michaels. Accompaniment to the song "Immune" by LOW. Said the Gramophone

"The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody's fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind.

Katherine Mansfield

(1888-1923)

"It's important to begin a search on a full stomach."Henry Bromel, Northern Exposure, The Big Kiss, 1991

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It's an irritating reality that many places and events defy description. Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, for instance, seem to demand silence,like a love affair you can nevertalk about.For a while after, you fumble for words, trying vainly to assemble a private narrative, an explanation, a comfortable way to frame where you've been and what's happened. In the end, you're just happy you were there - with your eyes wide open - and lived to see it.Anthony Bourdain (1956-), from The Nasty Bits.

"You say the sentence or you write the sentence again and again until the tuning fork is still." - Martin Amis (1949-)

"People like me write because otherwise we are pretty inarticulate. Our articulation is our writing." – William Trevor (1928-)

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to." Jim Jarmusch (1953- )

"A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals." John Steinbeck (1902-1968)

You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg gardens where you smelled and saw nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l'Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I thought that Cézanne was probably hungry in a different way.Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) - from A Moveable Feast.

"Men are climbing to the Moon, but they don't seem interested in the beating human heart."Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962), in a letter to a friend, one year before her death.

"The barbaric gleams right under the surface of all human skin."Jorie Graham (1950-)

S u b s c r i b e

"The real director of our life is Accident - a director full of cruelty, compassion and bewitching charm."Pascal Mercier (1944-)

"Talking of pleasure, this moment I was writing with one hand, and with the other holding to my mouth a nectarine - how good, how fine. It went down all pulpy, slushy, oozy, all it's delicious embonpoint melted down my throat like a large, beatified strawberry ."John Keats (1795-1821)

"Words are only painted fire, a book is the fire itself."Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"I'm what you might describe as the classic underachiever. I tread that fine line between boffin-dom and the grand amateur."Andrew Weatherall (1963-)

"The flesh would shrink and go, the blood would dry, but no one believes in his mind of minds, his heart of hearts that the picturesdostop."Saul Bellow (1915-2005) from Ravelstein